Me
My name is Mark Doliner. I’m a computer software engineer living and working in North Carolina, USA. I worked in the San Francisco Bay area for 13 years before moving back East in 2019. My email address is mark@kingant.net.
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Author Archives: Mark Doliner
Old La Honda Is On Zwift This Month
There’s a hill that I loved to ride up when I lived in California. The road is Old La Honda in the Santa Cruz mountains west of Palo Alto. Here’s the Strava segment. It’s 2.98mi with 1,255ft elevation gain at … Continue reading
Posted in Cycling
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I Bought a Bike Trainer
For the past 20 years I’ve biked or ran about once a week, usually on the weekend. But recently it’s been harder to make time for it. I think my weekends are busier than they used to be. So I … Continue reading
Posted in Cycling
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Phone Mount vs Dedicated Bike Computer for Road Biking
I don’t know why they’re called computers. “Speedometer” seems like a more useful descriptor. Anyway. From 2003 to 2012 I used a super basic bike computer with just speed, distance, and maybe cadence. Very much like this one: From 2012 … Continue reading
Posted in All, Cycling
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Mastodon and ActivityPub
I’ve started using Mastodon. It’s an open alternative to Twitter. “Open” meaning there’s no central controlling entity. Tech-savvy people can run their own server and servers can talk to each other (referred to as federation). If you’re interested in joining … Continue reading
Posted in All, Computers
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Let’s Encrypt is Fantastic
Apparently I haven’t posted this anywhere so I just want to go on record: Let’s Encrypt is amazing and fantastic. In five years the percentage of web pages loaded by Firefox using HTTPS went from 30% to 80%. That’s huge! … Continue reading
Posted in All, Computers
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Using Salt to Manage Server Configuration
Background I’ve been using Salt (for clarity and searchability it’s also sometimes referred to as Salt Project or Salt Stack) to manage the configuration of my web server since 2014. It’s similar to Puppet, Chef (I guess they call it … Continue reading
Posted in Computers
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Firefox as a Snap package in Ubuntu 22.04
In Ubuntu 22.04 Firefox is installed from a Snap package and not a dpkg like most other things and the update experience is awful. I get this notification: However, closing Firefox and reopening it does not cause it to be … Continue reading
Posted in Computers
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NASA Deep Space Network (DSN)
A random thing I stumbled upon and thought was interesting: NASA runs a website where you can see the current send/receive status of each antenna in the DSN (Deep Space Network) as well as the spacecraft it’s communicating with. The … Continue reading
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